DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO  “Nutcrackers” and Balanchine may win the hearts of dance fans, but City Ballet of San Diego artistic director Steven Wistrich said it’s dark-horse programs like next weekend’s “Ballet on the Edge” that make his heart race.

The season-opening production at Spreckels Theatre will feature three contemporary pieces — two of them premieres — in a program that Wistrich promises will be “edge of your seat” exciting, even if it may not attract die-hards classicists.

“It’s more difficult to sell tickets to contemporary works, especially premieres with no name recognition, but many times I’ve had people come up to me after a mixed program and they tell me they came for the ‘Swan Lake’ but they fell in love with the contemporary piece.”

Wistrich said classics will always be the mainstay of City Ballet’s repertoire, but contemporary works invigorate and challenge the staff, dancers and audience.

“To have a really legitimate art form, you always want to take it to the next place,” said Wistrich, who founded City Ballet 21 years ago with his wife, Elizabeth, the company’s resident choreographer. “Choreographers want to stretch the art form. Otherwise it gets boring.”

Megan Jacobs and Shane Ohmer rehearse for City Ballet’s upcoming “Ballet on the Edge” program Nov. 8-10 at Spreckels Theatre. CREDIT: Chelsea Penyak

Megan Jacobs and Shane Ohmer rehearse for City Ballet’s upcoming “Ballet on the Edge” program Nov. 8-10 at Spreckels Theatre. CREDIT: Chelsea Penyak

Wistrich said “Edge” will be eclectic, athletic, surprising and sensual (but still family-friendly).

“People will be fascinated and entertained, and certainly not bored,” he said.

Featured on the two-hour, 15-minute program are new and revived works by Elizabeth Wistrich and a new piece by company member Geoff Gonzalez.

The program will open with Elizabeth Wistrich’s 2004 work “Leave the Light On,” a 25-minute rock ballet for 18 dancers set to five gritty autobiographical songs by L.A. singer/songwriter Beth Hart. The dancers interpret the lyrics tracing Hart’s journey through an abusive childhood, troubled adolescence, struggle with drugs and destructive romantic relationships.

“Beth Hart is a fascinating person who writes infectious music. This is a mini-story of her life,” she said. “The dance is very contemporary, kind of rockish, that’s exciting to watch.”

Next up is “C-Squared,” an abstract classical piece that Wistrich admits has been among her biggest choreographic challenges in 30-plus years. The 24-minute, four-act piece for 12 dancers will be performed, in part, to atonal music by Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Charles Wuorinen.

“It’s different from anything I’ve ever done before,” she said. “At first I was going to choreograph all four to music, but I didn’t know if I could do it without slitting my wrists, so the first and third movements are done in silence.”

Wistrich said she discovered Wuorinen a few years ago when she bought a pile of his CDs during the Borders bookstore closing sale. The edgy, unmelodic pieces were selected from his “Tashi/Percussion Quartet” album.

“The music is angular, so I created very angular choreography,” she said. “I need that kind of a challenge to push myself in a different direction and the dancers responded to it, too.”

The program will close with Gonzalez’s premiere, “Inter-Nocturne.” Set to lush piano music by Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi, the 20-minute piece for 10 dancers will celebrate the “essence of the dancers,” Gonzalez said.

“I wanted something sexy and cool that captures the spirit of these dancers living in the moment that they’re onstage,” said Gonzalez, an Arizona native who joined the company in 2008 as a dancer and added choreography to his role last year.

Gonzalez brings his own multidiscipline background to the piece, which he describes as “atmospheric and melodic.” Gonzalez was a top-25 finalist on TV’s “So You Think You Can Dance” and toured internationally with Rasta Thomas’ Bad Boys of Dance (one of Gonzalez’s Bad Boys castmates, Russian dancer Sergey Kheylik, will be featured in “Inter-Nocturne”).

An aspiring dance producer, Gonzalez said he’s creating his own sets and costumes for “Inter-Nocturne.”

“It’s an audience- pleasing piece,” he said. “You don’t have to have any understanding of contemporary dance. You can just come and enjoy, because it’s beautiful.”